


why men great til they gotta be great?

by cosmicallycatastrophic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, seriously steve who DOES that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-06 03:33:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20284696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicallycatastrophic/pseuds/cosmicallycatastrophic
Summary: Bucky is halfway to blackout drunk, and he thinks he might choke on his own vomit if it comes. Not a fitting way to go for a super-soldier, but a fitting way to go for a very, very miserable man who has been abandoned by just about everyone.Bucky is drunk and sad. Lizzo helps.





	why men great til they gotta be great?

**Author's Note:**

> just a very self indulgent lil thing because i think bucky would benefit from listening to truth hurts by lizzo. hit me up on tumblr @greedismyservant!

Bucky is halfway to blackout drunk, which is something that could be considered a miracle of science, under different circumstances. Mostly it’s because he stole some mysterious liquor from Thor while he wasn’t looking and has been hitting it like it owes him money for the past two hours. The walls of the apartment he shares with Sam (_and Steve_, his mind adds, like the traitor it is) are revolving peacefully, enough to make him queasy where he is laying on the living room rug, and he panics briefly that he might choke on his own vomit if it comes. Not a fitting way to go for a super-soldier, but a fitting way to go for a very, very miserable man who has been abandoned by just about everyone.

He sits up suddenly when the door opens, and it feels like his head has decided I’ve had enough, thank you, you old, sad man, and detached from his body to float away in the spinning room. Bucky groans.

Sam comes in smelling of cigar smoke, which means he’s been hanging out with literally the only person who still smokes cigars, which- _that is so crazy, who still smokes cigars, does Nick know what he’s doing to his lungs?_\- and Bucky groans again, thinking about Avenger-things and Captain-America-sidekick-things and all the other _things_ he is somehow still expected to do even when half of his heart has said _we had a good run, old buddy old pal, but I simply must be going_, and fucked off and left him alone.

Alpine and Liho trot in after Sam, hissing at each other. Bucky reaches his hand out and Al obediently comes over to headbut it. Bucky is about to start weeping at the softness of his wonderful, beautiful cat when he hears a cough above him and jerks his head up. Sam is stood above him with his arms crossed, haloed by the ceiling light and the walls that are still blurring slightly.

“Bucky,” Sam says, “what are you doing.”

“I.” Bucky says back, hoping his voice is not as slurred as it feels. “Am stroking my cat, because he is soft.”

Sam sits down next to him, and the impact feels like it reverberates through the whole world. “Are you drunk, man?” He says, looking at Bucky very carefully.

Bucky squints his eyes back at him, wobbling as his one hand still pats Al’s head. “I think I probably am. Which is funny. Because people thought I couldn’t get drunk, like Steve.” He shakes his head, tries to clear it, and just laughs instead. “I had no one to drink with because you were,” he waves his hand around, “_Avenger_-ing, and Steve left me.” Bucky hears his voice crack on the last word, but he keeps the smile on his face, because hey, it’s a joke, when has anything ever gone right in his life? “And, it’s funny, because he said he’d stay. But he didn’t. He left me.” And Bucky knows his face is collapsing, and the tears that he’s been holding back for weeks are coming, heaving him apart, and he buries his face in his hand as best he can, tries not to sound like he’s exorcising some weird misery demon, because that’s what it feels like.

Sam stays next to him, holds his knee and rubs his back and waits until Bucky’s got most of it out. Bucky takes the tissue that Sam wordlessly offers.

“You know,” Sam says quietly, after Bucky’s breathing has evened out and he no longer feels like his chest is being chopped into pieces with a rusty meat cleaver, “he left me too.”

Bucky looks him in the eye and says, very seriously, “I am going to go and beat his skinny geriatric ass.”

It works; Sam laughs, hiccuping through the tears gathered in his eyes and his throat. He squawks when Bucky charges him from where they’re both sitting, pushes Sam’s shoulder and straddles his hips and then lies down on top of him, head over Sam’s heart.

“I can’t breathe, Barnes,” Sam says without any heat, and Bucky smiles and murmurs shhh and rubs his cheek over the soft cotton of Sam’s shirt. The nausea and dizziness of his drunkenness have worn off, and he feels warm and buzzy inside, even though he just cried so hard his lungs hurt.

“I’m not going to leave you,” Bucky says. “You can’t get rid of me.”

“I know that, dumbass.” Sam says, and then pauses. “I promise I will never leave you to go back in time and get some strap from a woman I only knew for two weeks. Like seriously, who does that?”

And Bucky laughs so hard he has to get off of Sam to go throw up for real.

\---

“So,” Sam says two days later, “I have discovered something that works better than therapy.”

“Oh, Diane’s gonna be upset about that,” Bucky answers, but he’s curious.

Sam gets out his phone and turns the speaker on. “I don’t know if you’re even ready for this, man. It is going to change your life.”

And twenty minutes later Bucky is dancing around the kitchen and shouting to his cats about how he just got a DNA test, so hey, maybe Sam was right.


End file.
